Sunday, February 10, 2013

Last weekend Charlie and I went to Hocking Hills with two other couples. The weather was perfect - it was cold, but not too cold. It snowed more than six inches that weekend, and we had a cabin with a wood burning fireplace and a hot tub.

On Saturday we hiked from Old Man's Cave to Cedar Falls and back again, about six miles. Sunday we got up and hiked to a natural rock bridge, which is just outside of Hocking Hills State Park. It just felt so incredibly good to get outside, work up a sweat, and breathe the fresh air for awhile. Just what the doctor ordered, for me anyways.

Shane, with the world on his shoulders...

Katie and Sireesha

Shane, me, Charlie, Dominic, and Katie

Shane and Sprite

this was the best way to get down many of the steeper inclines...

the natural rock bridge

Sprite was all tuckered out

Sorry it's kind of a lot of pictures. We took about a million.

This weekend has been nice in it's own right. We got to see Ellen and Max last night for the first time in ages, which was good. Ellen is almost 7 months pregnant now! Her shower is coming up, which I'm looking forward to. They're such good friends, I'm sad we don't get to hang out as much as we used to. But such is life when everyone except Charlie is in residency I suppose.

And I got most of my packing done for Ethiopia, which I was proud of! I'm leaving this Friday. It was close, but I think we've finally got everything in order, so with any luck we'll be able to operate when we're there. Otherwise I suppose I'll just loaf around Gondar for a few days, but I'm hopeful that by the time we get there everything will be straightened out. We were all good until the University over there tried to get out temporary medical licenses and they Ethiopian government told us we needed to get some thing certified by the State Department. Yikes! Trish pulled some serious strings to get that done.

Speaking of that, I found a great website on Pinterest. You can find it here. It's basically a website that has a packing list for women of must-have's and what to leave at home for pretty much every place you can ever imagine going. Was very helpful in what to pack to travel to East Africa, I must say.

On that note, I'm going to go study. Sometime I haven't done nearly enough of these past few weeks. I've barely had time to breathe, let alone study. A week in a foreign country with no email or cell phone access should be nice:)